


Prompt: Protectiveness

by EssayOfThoughts



Series: MCU Maximoff Oneshots [71]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Codependency, Gen, Protectiveness, Team Dynamics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-06
Updated: 2016-05-06
Packaged: 2018-06-06 16:10:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6760894
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EssayOfThoughts/pseuds/EssayOfThoughts
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They may have their differences but, in the end, they are a <i>team</i> and they will protect each other as fiercely as anyone else.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Prompt: Protectiveness

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lucdarling](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lucdarling/gifts).



> Written for a prompt on my tumblr, readable [Here](http://essayofthoughts.tumblr.com/post/143921324790/the-other-prompt-protective-team-dynamics-and-the). 
> 
> For reasons I’m ignoring large swathes of canon to give this the team line-up as it would be in my Bucky-Wanda fics. So: Steve, Tony, Sam, Rhodey, Nat & Clint, Bucky, Bruce, Vision, Wanda, Pietro, Scott, Sharon, Peter. And Hill too, for reasons. Thor is back on Asgard, so he's not on the list, T'Challa has a country to rule, so ditto.
> 
> So I don’t end up rambling _ad aeternam_ I’m also splitting this up by those characters - each numeral is when one of those characters is hurt and then looking at the other characters’ reactions.

**i.**   _steve_  
When Steve is the one hurt, the one lost, the one at death’s door due to some injury he took trying to save one person or a crowd of people the team can seem rudderless.

He leads them, that is known.

(It’s also, they all know, the reason he’s probably targeted so often)

Without him the team seems rudderless.

It isn’t.

Without him the team is chaos, yes, but the people are not, each focussed, in their own way, of finding where he is, how he is, how to help him or heal him, how to find who did this and end them and their works.

The team is chaos.

The people are not.

 

* * *

 

 **ii.**   _tony_  
Tony being injured doesn’t get the same kind of worry, no one waiting at his bed wringing their hands, no one offering the gentle comfort much of the rest of the team gets.

Mostly, of course, this is because they all know Tony is an arsehole who’ll survive to spite the universe if it comes to it.

Steve though, for all his issues with Tony, does not take well to his teammate being taken out. Bruce, for all his calm, has a monster living beneath his skin, ready to burst out in green fury if he but lets it, and _oh_  it wants to when one of the few to simply trust him with the Other Guy is hurt.

(there are two, two of those, and he has not seen Betty in _years_ )

When Tony is injured the team does not worry. He will live to spite the universe and they all know it.

But, well, there are always reasons to track down whoever did it, reasons to work on ways to improve medical while Tony’s in there, reasons to send Pepper little updates as to how their search is going.

Tony’s an arsehole, after all, but he’s _their_  arsehole.

 

* * *

 

 **iii.**   _sam_  
Sam is a hard one to pigeonhole, when it comes to how he fits in the team. He’s loyal and he fights as hard as any of them, but he has a practical, grounded edge, which much of the team seems to lack.

Sam being hurt makes the team angry yes, but quietly so, a quietly burning anger that bubbles up slowly but strongly like magma.

 

* * *

 

 **iv.** _rhodey_  
Rhodey is, as is generally acknowledged by the team, safe. He may be Tony’s friend and so the twins don’t _trust_  him, but they’ve adjusted to the idea that, of all the people on the team, Rhodey is one Tony is actually willing to listen to. He’s someone Steve and Sam respect as a fellow soldier, someone who - while not as grounded as Sam, due to overexposure to Stark - is still sensible and realistic when it comes down to it.

When Rhodey is hurt the team keeps an eye on Tony, each in their own ways, waiting for Stark to snap and seek out whomever did it.

 

* * *

 

 **v.** _nat & clint_  
Nat and Clint, the team knows, are two sides of the same coin when it comes to fighting. They’re each perfectly capable of working alone, each perfectly capable of leaving the other in the middle of a fight, each capable of what can seem like heartlessness when it comes to each other.

When one of them is injured or lost, though, when something has happened to the other their worry is almost palpable.

 _This one_ , their body language says in moments of worry, _is mine_. _Hurt them and you will pay_.

It matters not the manner of the claim they lay on each other, the depth of the stake they have in each other’s wellbeing. It’s as strong as any of the bonds of the team and they’ve all seen how quickly they relax seeing the other well again.

 

* * *

 

 **vi.** _bucky_  
Bucky is tough and nimble and more than able to avoid injury himself. It is rare, very rare, for him to be hurt in any way shape or form - at least that he shows them. 

Possibly, the team thinks, this is because when Bucky is hurt Steve is rapidly on the warpath.

Bucky isn’t inclined to let Steve go on the warpath without him.

 

* * *

 

 **vii.** _bruce_  
Bruce never expects the protectiveness that envelops him when he is hurt. He is very rarely hurt, to be fair, and is, since the first time he Hulked out, more used to people running screaming from him than offering him any kind of help.

When Bruce is hurt, and Hulks out, and shrinks back to human, the team is always there waiting for him.

 _It’s ok_  is whispered, in some form or other, and music - _his_  music - offered, and a blanket and a cup of chamomile or mint or jasmine tea. The team is there, unafraid of him, worried _for_  him, offering reassurances _(the Stark Relief people are there, people saw you hauling people clear of the collapse, it’s ok, it’s ok, it’s ok)_.

They offer him-as-Hulk and him-as-Bruce a sense of peace and acceptance he hasn’t had since Betty.

 

* * *

 

 **viii.** _vision_  
There is nothing, in truth, that can truly injure Vision, but there are things which can hurt him. Computer viruses can’t really do much to the side of him that is code, and human viruses cannot work through his systems and the vibranium lacing through his cells.

Emotional hurt though, that can do a great deal of harm.

To be called unnatural... he knows he _is_  but knowing the hatred behind it, the force of it, feeling things thrown at him by people that do not care to see what he might do himself and judge him simply for his making...

It is Wanda who finds him usually, after that, and sometimes rarely Pietro, the other two who are deemed _unnatural_  by the clamouring crowds.

“It does not matter what they say,” they murmur to him, one hand clasped around his wrist, and Vision wonders sometimes if they say this to each other when this happens to them. “You are better than them all.”

It’s Clint though, Clint who really brings him out of it. He’s sitting down, fine-tuning the balance of one of his experimental arrows, looking at the screen of the gates, showing a mass of placards, a choir of chants. 

“Unnatural,” Clint huffs. “Half their clothes are _unnatural_. The damn roads and gates and placards are _unnatural_. They’re just _ignorant_.”

Vision cannot help a smile at that.

 

* * *

 

 **ix.** _wanda_  
Wanda injured, as one might expect, gains anger, deep burning anger, from Pietro, and Pietro never sits easy until Wanda is well and vengeance has been taken.

What surprises the team, though, is that Pietro will leave vengeance to another if Wanda needs evac more.

Bucky understands, when Pietro asks it of him and Vision the first time, understands that, when someone is a part of you, you might want to take vengeance for the injury, but that injury is hurting you too.

“I will _kill_  them,” Pietro murmurs more than once into comms, and often does exactly that, but other times, other times, feeling Wanda’s pulse weakening, seeing her crumpled in the midst of a fight, he stops. 

“I will get her clear,” he says then, “ _You_  kill them.”

Vision might not agree, nor Steve, nor Scott, nor Sharon. 

Bucky does, though, and Clint, and they each in turn come back with bloodied hands when Pietro asks it of them.

 

* * *

 

 **x.** _pietro_  
Having lost him once the threat of losing him again turns Wanda wild, scarlet lashing out in great monstrous waves. There is no need, usually, for the team to respond if someone hurts Pietro, Wanda responds on her own, huge scarlet blasts, threads of it weaving into minds, tugging unwilling legs forwards to face her glowing eyes.

It’s a weakness, the twins codependency, and everyone from the team, to their enemies, to the public knows it, but they themselves don’t care and, worse, much of the team _understands._

It is known, rapidly, that hurting one twin might hurt the other, but hurting Pietro will undoubtedly hurt _you_.

 

* * *

 

 **xi.** _scott_  
There’s the team and then there’s _his_  team, and to Scott the Avengers are not the latter. His team is Luis and Dave and Kurt and Pym and Hope, people who he knows how to work with and work around, and maybe it’s not exactly _legal_ what they do, but they’re _his team_.

They can’t protect him when it gets out that Giant/Ant-man is an ex-thief. 

Can’t protect him from the insults and the demands for punishment even after he’s already served his term. Can’t reroute the mail sent to him and to where Maggie and Cassie (and Paxton) are living, saying even worse things.

The Avengers do, though, Tony Stark putting his great resources into defusing the situation.

“You’re team,” Steve says, when Scott is staring blankly at the wall in the Facility, wondering why on _earth_  they’re going to all this effort, not just for him but for _Cassie_  too, who most of them have never met.

“You’re team,” Steve repeats. “We’re not going to let them hurt you.”

 

* * *

 

 **xii.** _sharon_  
Sharon is new to the team but is trusted by Nat and Clint and Hill which speaks well enough of her character to everyone else. (She’s also trusted by Steve but well… as Bucky points out _Steve is **Steve**  and likely to trust just about any strays that he can convince to follow him home_)

(He may have glanced at the twins when he said that, but they only laughed.)

Sharon is of the team but she is not _of the team_. They do not fret about her the same way, yet, do not worry and fight to see her well as they do for each other, yet. They have all fought at one another’s sides before - and against as well, to be sure - and Hill has been there in her own way for long enough to matter to them all.

Sharon has not, and knows not to expect the same courtesy.

They’re all more than a little surprised when Clint takes down the HYDRA driver who clipped Sharon with a well placed arrow. They’re still surprised when Natasha chokes to unconsciousness the man who poisoned her.

They’re a bit less surprised when the man who shot Sharon goes down to a combined move by Sam and Steve that sends him stumbling straight into a concussion-causing strike from Steve’s shield.

 

* * *

 

 **xiii.** _peter_  
Peter is Tony’s responsibility, this is generally agreed. Tony brought Peter on board, gave him a suit, gave him a place.

Peter is Tony’s responsibility, and Tony takes this responsibility with a seriousness that surprises the twins.

“No one hurts Peter,” had been one of Tony’s earliest decrees, and most of the team quickly picked up the myriad reasons why - Peter’s youth, that he keeps his hero identity secret from his family, that he, like Rhodey,like Pepper, is someone Tony _respects_.

Tony doesn’t like it when people hurt those he respects.

Tony will go to great lengths for those he respects.

 

* * *

 

 **xiv.** _hill_  
Hill isn’t really _team_  per se, and only Steve, Sharon, Nat and Clint really seem to _like_ her on any real level, but she is _team_  to their mindset. She helped to bring them together under Fury’s command and now, with Fury off doing gods-knows-what she organises them, arranges things for them, helps them in a myriad tiny ways.

And she is a crackshot with a gun to rival Nat and Sharon. That helps.

When Maria is injured she is _Maria_  to them, not Hill, not Agent, and one of them is always waiting at her bedside while the others track down the perpetrator.

Maria may be S.H.I.E.L.D. to her core, but in their own way, isn’t that what the team is meant to be? Not S.H.I.E.L.D. the organisation, but S.H.I.E.L.D. the ideal, protecting people from harm. With S.H.I.E.L.D. gone, that is what Maria is too, and so she is _team_  to the Avengers. None of them rest easy when they see her hurt.

 

* * *

 

**Author's Note:**

> If you enjoyed this please leave a comment!


End file.
